Personal replaces property communication

Looking back over changes in the way we communicate by phone, the biggest change for me is the move from ‘property’ based communication to ‘personal’ communication. Historically, if we wanted to contact someone we had to phone their home or office number and hope we reached them – we weren’t calling them, we were calling their home or office. Now we call their mobile phone and call them as an individual. What does this mean in reality – it improves the chance of actually reaching the person you want to speak to (assuming they have their phone with them!) and removes the frustration of leaving and taking messages for others. Now, when the home phone rings it’s never for me – I’ve managed to move my callers over to my mobile – so I tend to ignore it! Communication has always been about person to person communication but it’s taken mobile phones to make that a reality. The one issue in the UK that still acts as a barrier to person to person communication is the higher cost of calling a mobile. However for many, convenience outweighs cost; and the gap is narrowing.